Our depth in midfield (or lack thereof)

By: Shaun | February 21st, 2011

9324275 I’m reflecting on the scathing post that I put up yesterday and am wondering now if I was too harsh in my assessment. Clearly, we put on a second rate display (at best). But is it fair and realistic to expect the players that took the field to perform at the standard that we’re used to expecting from our first team?

Our midfield quality in particular has been questioned repeatedly this season with the impending retirement of Scholes and Giggs (at least after next season) looming on the horizon. Aside from Nani’s emergence, there’s been no one else in our team that has taken the step up to that elusive “next level”.

Being Manchester United, we know that our typical season involves a lot more games than the average PL side because of our involvement in Europe as well as our ability to make deep runs (=more games) in the domestic cup competitions. What is of great importance then isn’t just the quality of our first team midfielders, but that of our squad players as well.

Assuming a starting midfield of Giggs, Scholes, Fletcher and Nani
Available for bench selection: Anderson, Park, Carrick, Valencia, Obertan, and Gibson.

How do we stack up in this area compared to our closest rivals?

wilshere_fabregas Arsenal
Assuming a starting midfield of Diaby, Fabregas, Nasri and Wilshere.
Available for bench selection: Rosicky, Walcott, Denilson, Song, Eboue, Arshavin

Chelsea
Assuming a starting midfield of Essien, Ramires, Lampard and Malouda
Available for bench selection: Obi Mikel, Zhirkov, McEachran and Benayoun

City
Assuming a starting midfield of Barry, Silva, Y Toure and De Jong
Available for bench selection: Milner, Wright Phillips, A Johnson, and Viera

Spurs
Assuming a starting midfield of Bale, Modric, Van Der Vaart and Palacios
Available for bench selection: Huddlestone, Lennon, Jenas, Kranjcar, Sandro, and Pienaar MODRIC CELEBRATES WITH BALE

Liverpool
Assuming a starting midfield of Gerrard, Meireles, Lucas and Kuyt
Available for bench selection: J Cole, Jovanovic, Maxi, Poulsen and Shelvey

Aside from Park and Valencia, who we’ve missed due to the Asian Cup and injury respectively, there isn’t another name on our bench that we can count on to step into the starting lineup and do a consistently good job. I’ve already called out Gibson in the prior post and Ando has been both amazingly good and bafflingly bad this season. Obertan and Carrick are inconsistent at best.

Compare that to the likes of the Gunners who can call on Walcott or Arshavin off the bench to be game changers or Spurs, who have a contingent of midfielders on the bench who could easily walk into the starting lineup for half of the PL teams. The same could be said of City’s bench as well.

While Scholes and Giggs keep our midfield competitive relative to the other teams above, we know that there isn’t anyone after Nani who could potentially start for the other teams. A quick glance at the starters on the other team and we could identify players that would command a place in our starting 11 if they were on our roster.

Despite all of the above, we still find ourselves sitting in 1st place in the league and remain in the hunt for both the FA Cup and the CL.

Is this then a case where we need to be reminded of the following?
“Sometimes you look in a field and you see a cow and you think it’s a better cow than the one you’ve got in the field. It’s a fact, right, and it never really works out that way. It’s probably the same cow and it’s not as good as your own cow.”

Some Related Man United Posts:

Category: English Premier League, Man Utd Ramblings, Manchester United

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brenton

Arsenal
Assuming a starting midfield of Diaby, Fabregas, Nasri and Wilshere.
Available for bench selection: Rosicky, Walcott, Denilson, Song, Eboue, Arshavin

Song will always start ahead of Diaby. And because of our formation, we have 5 starting midfielders: Song, Wilshere, Fabregas, Nasri and Walcott, let's say.

This means that our midfield subs are:

Diaby - a liability, poor decision-making
Rosicky - doesn't really contribute much anymore
Denilson - doesn't really fit in our squad, oddly enough
Eboue - inconsistent, flashy, annoying (as a midfielder)
Arshavin - brilliant and inconsistent

Of those, I am only really happy to have Arshavin. I think everyone saw this weekend that Arsenal's reserve squad, like ManU's, is not up to snuff.
Shaun

guess we're in the same boat..although not necessarily one that either one of us want to be in.
GAZZARO

A Very Good Article to point out how much we need to bring in top class midfielder to strengthen our squad...

There is no point to lie ourselves, keep praising our players who infact they are not that good...

I think if we consider quality of the midfield of all top teams in EPL in fairness, based on the World Standard, we will see that United are very much behind our rivals. Arsenal do have world class midfielders like Fabregas, and Nasri. Wilshere can be rated as top young talented (Everyteam wold love to sign him if they've got money), while players like Arshavin, Rosicky, Wallcott, Diaby, Song, and Denilson can be rated as very good international class.

For Chelsea, Essien and Lampard can be rated as top class players, while the others like Malouda, Zhirkov, and Benayoun can be rated as good international class.

Tottenham is looking good. Players like Modric, VDV, and Bale can all be rated as top class players. The others like Palacious, Lennon, Kranjcar, and Pienaar are all very good international class.

City do have top class midfielder like Y.Toure and Silva, while the others like A Johnson, Milner, De Jonk, and Barry are all good international class.

Liverpool though they're on a bad run, they still have Gerrard and Meireles.

For United, Scholes and Giggs used to be top class players, but their time is running out. Apart from these 2, only Nani can be rated as top class player. Fletcher and Park (with their style of play, i.e. keep running and chasing) can be rated as good international class. The others like Carrick, Obertan, Bebe, and Gibson are not United class. Infact some of them are even not EPL class. Imagine, if next season Scholes retire, and Giggs doesn't play week in week out, and if we keen bringing in oor quality players like Bebe, Obertan, Tosic, etc. We will see no quality in our side at all.

SAF keep saying that there is no value in the market. But he see value in Bebe and paid 7.6 million on this poor signing!!! Tottenham paid a similar amount of money at the same time and get VDV... WHY???

Some of my friend told me that the reason that Martin Ferguson (SAF's brother) tried to sign unknown players like Bebe, Obertan, Tosic, Manucho, Diouff, etc. is because there is no competition for the signature of these players. So they can up the price to whatever they want, and make more room for their own money.